Joel Shuman is professor of theology at King’s College in Pennsylvania and with Keith Meador is the co-author of Heal Thyself: Spirituality, Medicine, and the Distortion of Christianity. Shuman spoke with Church Health Reader about the Christian tradition and contemporary culture.

John Shorb: How did you become interested in medicine, health and wellness and how it relates to Christianity?

Joel Shuman: I have been interested the human body and the way it works for as long as I can remember. I converted to Christianity while I was a student in physical therapy school, and it was natural for me to connect what I was learning academically with what I was learning about Christian discipleship. Often in western Protestantism, we overlook the theological significance of the human body.

What do you think the roots of this thinking are?

One cause is the general cultural trend toward a kind of dualism: thinking that the mind (or soul) and the body are distinctly different things that are radically separate from one another. Humans have long viewed our bodies as a means of getting around, a means of deriving pleasure, a means of accomplishing certain things—but we have not typically thought of our bodies as ourselves. We are content to communicate with one another electronically—and while these things are convenient and useful, they can lead to a sense of deprecation of the body.

You say it is more of a general cultural problem today as opposed to a problem specifically in the Church. Do you think the Church has acquiesced to the dominant mainstream culture in America?

To a significant extent it has. When I talk to my students about what they believe about their relationship to their body, most of them are Platonic dualists. They believe they have an immortal soul that will live on after their death, apart from the body. There is scant evidence of belief in the traditional Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body.

As embodied souls we are never less than our bodies. Our bodies are part of the gift of being a creature of God. We are born with limitations and needs because of our physicality. Ideally, Christians should embrace our embodiedness—including our limitations—as a part of God’s gift of being human.

What evidence of that do you see in the Bible? Are there some key passages that illustrate that idea?

Brian Volck and I tried to say some interesting things theologically about the body in our book Reclaiming the Body.

Wendell Berry has a wonderful account of the creation narrative in Genesis. He says the biblical formula is not body plus soul equals human. Instead, it is earth plus breath equals human. We are what Augustine called animated earth, living dirt. This is affirmed through the Scriptures.

This is not to say we are only our bodies – we are always more than our bodies. We are not reducible to the elements that constitute our bodies. There is something mysterious about us that makes us more than that. Yet fundamentally we are still finite mortal bodies.

A good deal of Paul’s writing also has some interesting things to say about the body, about both its goodness and its limits. In Romans 6, Paul presents the idea that in baptism, we are united bodily with Christ in his burial and his resurrection. One of the remarkable and wonderful things about the Corinthian correspondence is there is an ambiguity in the way that Paul refers to the body of Christ so that it becomes impossible to say that he is talking about the community, Jesus’ human body or the elements of the Eucharist. Whenever he talks about one of these distinctions, he is always inferring the other things. They are always in the background. One of the thrusts of the passage in 1 Corinthians 12 is that the fundamental duties members have toward one another’s bodies. We are called to care and support one another in our physicality, particularly in times of suffering.

How do you see that idea in Corinthians on a congregational level?

In baptism, we are commonly united to Christ and to one another. On a congregational level, that means that we are fundamentally connected socially to each other in a variety of ways. In Paul’s discourse on the body of Christ in 1 Corinthians 12:26, he says, “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.” A congregation should see the significance of baptism and the body of Christ, so that they act freely to share their lives with one another. In times of need, Christians should be willing to talk about their needs and accept help from one another.

Congregations have left this ministry of caring for the sick behind as medicine has become sophisticated and professionalized. Not altogether incorrectly, the Church has handed over the care of the sick to professionals. The mistake the Church has made is to think that in doing so we have given up the congregational obligation to care for the sick. There are significant ways of ministering to suffering that are not going to happen under the aegis of modern industrial medicine. There are a lot of things we can do for one another; according to Paul, we are empowered by the gifts of the spirit to do them. We have the scriptural mandate to do that.

In your book, Heal Thyself, you write that “sickness and death are both enemies but neither are ultimate enemies.” You also discuss how Christians have taken this view. Do you see this alive and well when you speak with congregations? How do you counter that?

I find that people have not taken time to think about these matters at any length. It is not necessarily because they are afraid to think about them; often they welcome the opportunity to talk about these questions. I sometimes ask people: “What would it mean to talk about someone having a good death?” That is a language that is traditionally Christian, but has fallen by the wayside. It is not to suggest that death is a good thing, but instead, there are better and worse ways of approaching and preparing for death. Encouraging people to think and talk about the possibility of a good death is a healthy thing. It can only help Christians to talk about the ways they can support one another in those situations.

If a person, family, or congregation waits until they are confronted by a crisis decision in the hospital to think about death or how they envision their life ending, then they are going to be in a difficult spot. One of the greatest services congregation members can do for one other is to talk openly about mortality; to discuss the expectations they have about the final moments of their lives. Those kinds of conversations make good decisions in times of crisis possible. Most churches have some structure through which they can introduce conversations about some of these matters and think through these things.